Now or Never
Authors: Elizabeth Adler
NOW OR NEVER
“NERVE-JANGLING SUSPENSE, STEAMY SEX, GLAMOROUS CHARACTERS … THE NOVEL PACKS A WALLOP!”
—
Booklist
“THIS IS ONE BOOK NOT TO BE PASSED OVER … A MESMERIZING WORK OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE.”
—Harriett Klausner,
Internet Bookwatch
“[A] TOP-NOTCH ROMANTIC THRILLER … COMBINING TENSION, SENSUALITY, AND GREAT CHARACTERIZATION!”
—
Library Journal
“ENGROSSING AND EXHILARATING, ELIZABETH ADLER’S SUPERB NEW RELEASE BRINGS A WONDERFUL CAST OF CHARACTERS VIVIDLY TO LIFE!”
—
Romantic Times
“[A] SUSPENSEFUL, CAREFULLY PLOTTED NOVEL …
NOW OR NEVER
IS ADLER AT HER BEST … A TREAT!”
—
Brazosport Facts
By Elizabeth Adler
LÉONIE
PEACH
THE RICH SHALL INHERIT
THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
FORTUNE IS A WOMAN
LEGACY OF SECRETS
THE SECRET OF THE VILLA MIMOSA
NOW OR NEVER
INDISCRETIONS (writing as Ariana Scott)
ALL OR NOTHING
SOONER OR LATER
IN A HEARTBEAT
If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.
Shakespeare,
Hamlet
T
HE NIGHT WAS COOL
, dark and moonless, with a slight breeze that lifted her long brown hair. He watched the girl walk slowly across the college parking lot to her little red Miata convertible. His night-vision binoculars picked up every detail. Even though it was late—well past midnight—and the lot was deserted and filled with shadows, her sneakered feet seemed to drag, as though she were too tired even to care about possible danger.
He loved it …. He loved the breathtaking innocence of her as she walked unsuspectingly toward him.
He knew all about her. He had watched her for weeks, planning for this night. He knew where she lived, in the off-campus apartment shared with a couple of other students. He knew the layout of that apartment. He had inspected the chaos of her littered room, had stretched out on her bed, smelling the faint odor of her ripe young body on the tangled sheets. To keep that memory, that signal that triggered the excitement that would culminate tonight, he had snatched a pair of her panties from the pile of laundry on the floor, holding them to his face in an agony of trembling passion that had him on the brink.
Controlling himself, saving the savage pleasure and the pain for later, he had glanced distastefully around the littered student digs: at the brimming ashtrays, the empty Coke cans, the discarded pizza boxes and the clutter of CDs, candles and grungy clothing
that covered every surface. He had wondered, disgustedly, how she could live like that. Thrusting the cotton panties into his pocket, he had walked calmly back through the French window, across the patio into the alley, and away.
He knew what time the girl’s classes were, that she was pre-med and a class valedictorian at her high school in Baltimore. He knew her name, that she wore Calvin Klein underwear and Gap T-shirts and red Converse hightops. He knew where she bought her coffee and blueberry-muffin-to-go each morning, where she hung out in the evening, and what time she went to bed.
He also knew that she had no steady boyfriend, that she dated rarely, and that she was immersed in studying for the end-of-semester finals. And that was why she was dragging her feet as she walked across the parking lot toward him. She was exhausted.
He was wearing his “uniform”: a fine quality black turtleneck sweater of the type worn by skiers; a black ski mask that covered his head and face leaving slits for his eyes; black sweatpants and black sneakers. Crouched low in the back of her Miata, his heartbeat went into overdrive as she stepped closer and the adrenaline surge hit him.
His eyes were riveted to the binoculars as she stepped closer. He could see every detail. The way her breasts moved under her white shirt. The way the black leggings outlined her thighs and clung to her crotch. The look of fatigue on her pretty face as she took a final drag on the Marlboro, then flung it to the ground.
The lit butt glowed red and he frowned with anger at her irresponsibility and untidiness. He saw her glance warily at his gunmetal-gray Volvo station wagon, polished to a dull gleam, parked next to the Miata. From the fleeting expression on her face, he saw her dismiss it as the essence of suburban respectability, the safe automobile of a Boston family man or woman.
Clutching her book bag to her chest, she fiddled with
her keys, stuck them into the lock and opened the door. He stopped breathing and crouched even lower. Would she check in the back? If she did, he was ready.
She flung the heavy book bag onto the passenger seat with a groan of relief, then put the key in the ignition and fumbled for another cigarette.
He prided himself that she never knew what hit her. The swift expert chop to the carotid artery temporarily cut off the blood to her brain. The pack of Marlboros slipped from her hand as she slumped forward, unconscious, smacking her forehead on the steering wheel.
He pulled her back by her long brown hair, scowling as he saw the already purpling bruise. He liked his girls pristine, unmarked. He slid from the back of the Miata, silently cursing its smallness. He opened her door and hefted her from the driver’s seat. For a few seconds he just held her, reveling at her helplessness in his arms, marveling at the feather-lightness of her, at her softness, at the mingled feminine odors of her perfume and lipstick. Then he bundled her onto the floor of the Volvo, quickly taped her mouth, then her wrists and covered her with a dark plaid rug.
The cigarette butt was still glowing faintly in the night. He walked across, stamped it out, then picked it up and flung it in the nearby trash can.
Slamming the rear door, he climbed into the driver’s seat and locked the car doors. He pulled off the black ski mask, knotted a discreet paisley silk scarf over his black turtleneck and shrugged on an expensive but comfortably well-worn tweed jacket. Running his hands quickly through his hair, he glanced once more over his shoulder as he started the car and made for the exit. All was quiet. Heaving a pleased sigh, he pushed the CD play button, filling the car with a delicate Bach cantata as he swung left out of the exit.
The drive was quite long—over an hour—but pleasant.
He followed the music’s complicated geometric patterns expertly in his head, nodding to the rhythms, smiling as he thought of
his girl
“sleeping” in the back, waiting for him. Pulling the Calvin panties from his pocket, he held them to his face, breathing in the scent of her, titillating himself with the promise of pleasures to come.
He drove through Gloucester, then Rockport, a little further north up the coast, slowing as he passed through the deserted Main street of a small town. A half mile farther on, he turned the car down a lane leading to the beach and parked in the lee of a small wooden jetty.
He glanced quickly at the three or four small boats, listening to the smooth surge of the ocean on the shore and the slap-slap of the waves against the hulls. Only the stars and a faint phosphorescence hovering over the ocean gave a glimmer of light.
He took off his jacket and the scarf, climbed out of the car and opened the rear passenger door. He glanced at the illuminated dial of his watch. It was two thirty.
She was lying exactly as he had left her, eyes closed, her pretty face pale under her long fling of dark hair. Such soft hair, he thought, running its shining strands through his fingers. Such beautiful,
hateful
long hair.
He dragged her roughly from the car and hefted her in his arms again. He put his hand to her face, ran a finger across her smooth young skin. She moaned and her eyelids fluttered.
Suddenly she was looking at him
.
Her eyes were blue, but the dilated pupils had turned them almost black and she was having trouble focusing. Cursing himself for not putting on the ski mask, he hastily covered her face with the rug and hauled her down onto the beach.
He set her down by the flaking wooden jetty and chopped her neck again with his hand. Her head sagged; she was unconscious. He untaped her hands and then hit her, again and again, beating her in a fury of punches, her
head, her face, her breasts. He paused in his work, his breath coming quickly. Then with trembling fingers he unfastened the buttons of her shirt.
He sat back on his heels, staring at her. Her breasts were small, two perfect pink-nippled spheres splotched with ugly red and blue welts where he had beaten her. With an anguished cry he flung himself on her, biting and sucking her breasts with manic ferocity.
After a while he sat up. He took out a small, immaculately clean knife, unsheathed it, and put the plastic cover back in his pocket. He ran the blade across his finger with a satisfied sigh. Then he jerked her head up and began systematically to hack off her long brown hair. It took him about three or four minutes and he enjoyed every second of it. Sometimes he thought this was the best part. He looked at her, lying half naked with her raggedly shorn head, helpless before him, and he laughed. It was a sound of pure pleasure.
He dragged off her black leggings, hurriedly now—he could hardly wait, the urge was building inside him. He pulled down her panties, identical to the pair he had stolen from her room, and stared at the tangled dark bush of hair, quivering as he anticipated how she would feel. He wore nothing under his own black sweatpants, and he was on top of her in a minute, thrusting himself into her, cursing the tightness of her, glorying in the scent of her: hating her.
He thrust himself into her again and again. It was almost too much to bear; the sheer quivering scream of it was inside him as he halted for a split second.
The thin knife was ready in his hand. He turned her hands palm up, then with swift efficiency he slit first her right wrist, and then her left. The rich blood gushed forth, pulsing with his terrifying climax.
He sat back, still shuddering. There was no other sensation
in the world to equal it. This perfect moment of power.
His head jerked around as he heard a noise. Someone was on the beach. He could see the glint of a flashlight, hear men’s voices. He leaped from her.
The fisherman walking along the beach swung his flashlight upward at the sound. For a split second the man’s face was caught in its beam, staring fixedly like a deer caught in headlights.
Then he turned and ran. He flung open the car door, tossing the bloody knife onto the floor as he turned on the ignition. With the lights off, he swung the car around and gunned it down the lane.